Leathercraft for the Amateur Leather Craftsman

$4.95

Originally published in the 1940s, Leathercraft is a book for the amateur leather craftsman describing a variety of leather projects which can be made in the home, together with the materials, tools, operations and processes necessary to each. It presents simple step-by-step directions for making explicit articles beginning with a simple bookmark and progressing to handbags, belts and braided lanyards, and includes, in addition to these instructions, a brief history of the first uses of leather, the value of tanning it, the first tanning processes, the early trade guilds and the first machinery used in the preparation of leather.

Heavily illustrated, Leathercraft is an immediately useful source book on leather handicraft activities -- a careful guide through the design and manufacture of professionally-finished leather articles.

Book Excerpt:

This book has been written for the beginning leathercraftsman. It is not a technical treatise of leatherwork. It may be used as a course of study in leatherwork for elementary and secondary school pupils, especially in the art and industrial arts fields. Boy and girl scout counselors and occupational therapists should find the book valuable both as a reference book and as a textbook. The home craftsman should have little difficulty in following the directions, and many enjoyable leisure-time hours may be spent in making worthwhile leather articles.

It will be noticed that there are no separate chapters on tools and materials, operations and processes. Each material, tool, operation or process has been introduced as the NEED for it arises. The leather projects, or articles to be made, progress from the simple to the more difficult. Therefore the materials, tools, operations and processes introduced progress from the basic to the more specialized.

Each chapter is similar to a job sheet. Complete instructions for the making of a leather project are given in each chapter. The reader will notice that each succeeding chapter presents only NEW operations, processes, tools, and materials. Frequent references are made to preceding chapters for directions of operations and processes which must be repeated. Therefore, each operation and illustration has been numbered accumulatively throughout the text for reference purposes.

The primary objective of this book is to present fundamental leather handicraft activities in a clear and practical manner. The actions have been well illustrated and carefully grouped in sequential order to provide explicit directions for the step-by-step manufacture of a typical leather article. No attempt was made to list projects and designs. It is the author's belief that the individual readers' taste and diversified interests are too varied to be even partly satisfied in a book of this type. Patterns of leather articles and various designs may be obtained from a number of sources too numerous to mention.